You, Me and the Apocalypse (2015-) TV series

A refreshing British comedy with very dark moments (violent murders) in which a group of related and unrelated misfits come together in a bunker in Slough, England, to wait out the impact of a comet/asteroid. This TV series premiered in the UK in September 2015 and in North America in January 2016. In addition to being set in Slough, other locations include Rome, Italy, and New Mexico, USA.

Meteor Storm (2010) TV movie

In the 2010 Meteor Storm TV movie created for the SyFy Channel in the United States, a meteor shower from a comet oribiting the Earth threatens to destroy San Francisco and then the world.

The Prophet and the Astronomer (2001) book

Marcelo Gleiser's 2001 book, The Prophet and the Astronomer: A Scientific Journey to the End of Time, examines the relation between predictions of the end of the universe by cosmographers and astrophysicists and religious and philosophical revelations of the apocalypse. This work was originally published in Portuguese under the title O fim da Terra e do Céu: O apocalipse na ciência e na religião, and was translated into English by the author.

2012 and Counting (2009) article

Skeptic magazine (vol. 15, no. 2, 2009) published an article by David Morrison titled "2012 and Counting: A NASA Scientist Answers the Top 20 Questions About 2012." Most of the article is about the bogus (fictional) planet Nibiru, also known as Planet X, around which there is supposed to be a conspiracy to conceal its existence. According to Morrison's introduction, "I answer questions from the public submitted on-line to a NASA website (astrobiology.nasa.gov), and over the past two years the Nibiru-2012 doomsday has become the dominant topic people ask about."

The Hammer of God (1993) novel

You'll notice that fiction about doomsday that associates God with the event may use either the word hammer or fist. Arthur C. Clarke's novel The Hammer of God is set in the 22nd century where the technology isn't much better than it is today at stopping a giant asteroid headed to Earth because Murphy's Law works equally well in the future as it does today.

Lucifer's Hammer (1977) novel

Science fiction authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer examines what would happen if a comet hits the Earth. It's a terrific read.

Nemesis (1998) novel

Kind of a Da Vinci Code meets Revelations, Bill Napier's thriller Nemesis is about an asteroid of that name headed to Earth ... or is it. A 17th century Latin manuscript somehow figures in the plot. Not content with blowing up the asteroid, the Americans want to blow up the Russians instead.

Deep Impact (1998)

Quite possibly the finest asteroid or comet impact movie made in the 20th century, this movie also starred Elijah Wood prior to his Lord of the Rings trilogy. A comet or asteroid heading to Earth can't be stopped despite actor Robert Duvall and his astronaut crew's best attempt to blow it up. Once again it's up to the U.S. government to save humanity from extinction by randomly selecting through a lottery system 800,000 ordinary citizens as well as 200,000 of the elite (scientists, doctors, artists and so on). These million get to live out this extinction event in caves. A ray of hope, however, is offered at the end when Wood and his girlfriend, who hasn't been selected for the caves as Wood's family was, outrace a giant tsunami and reach the safety of a hilltop.

This was not the only planetary impact movie of the year, as Bruce Willis starred in the Biblically titled Armageddon, a much less realistic depiction of what might happen.

When Worlds Collide (1933) novel and movie (1951)

I remember reading as a teenager Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie's 1933 novel When Worlds Collide and being frightened by it. In their scenario, rather than Planet X (Nemesis or Niburu), which is hypothesized as being part of our solar system, another planet they call Zyra comes careening into our solar system and smacks into the Earth. Some resourceful people manage to build a spaceship and launch themselves to get away.

I didn't think the sequel, After Worlds Collide (1934) was half as good.

A movie, When Worlds Collide, was released in 1951. I saw it many years after first reading the novel and did not think it as good.

Meteor (2009) TV movie

I didn't realize at first that the 2009 TV movie Meteor broadcast in two parts on July 12 and 19 was a remake of the 1979 feature film of the same title. The premise is the same for both: a comet hits an asteroid and changes its orbit. What are the odds that the asteroid will head straight to Earth? In Hollywood, it's always 1 to 1 odds where asteroids and meteors and their chances of striking Earth and obliterating the planet or human civilization are concerned.

Christopher Lloyd, who plays an astronomer with a "cry wolf" reputation for a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) official played by Jason Alexander, was billed as one of the stars. Lloyd's character, who seemed to be a remix of his Back to the Future one, was killed off fairly early in part one. His female protege goes through a series of unbelievable adventures, including stumbling into a Mexican police station that's been taken over by either on-site prisoners or escaped inmates from a prison. She manages to escape, all the while clutching her laptop computer with its precious calculations on the trajectory of an asteroid named Kassandra heading to Earth. A number of sub-plots are played out, all of which are rather contrived and some of the main characters in these different sub-plots converge at the end of part 2.

Of course the Earth is saved from a horrible fate when the young female astronomer manages to convince the U.S. military to reprogram their nuclear missiles and those of the Russians and Chinese while in flight and minutes before they're set to impact the asteroid so that the missiles will detonate before impact and with their blast cushion deflect the asteroid away from the Earth and also not let nuclear radiation poison the atmosphere. Whew, I'm glad we were able to stop that from happening. The TV movie ends rather gloomily, however, when in the concluding scene the female astronomer tells the male lead character of another asteroid headed our way in a few years time for yet another close call.

2012 the movie

The one trailer I've seen in theaters so far for the movie 2012 looks impressive -- a tsunami engulfs the Himalayas and overwhelms a monk who's sounded the alarm -- all caused by Planet X, also known as Nemesis or Niburu (the Destroyer). so I'm anxious to learn what's caused this catastrophe Clearly, Mr. Monk didn't need to bother since nobody would be left to hear or heed his warning. The full trailer at the official site is spectacular. Roland Emmerich, the genius director of two other mega-death movies, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, turns his attention to the powerful Mayan prophecy that the world will end on December 21, 2012. Now if the ancient Mayans had somehow synchronized their timekeeping efforts with the Western world’s calendar and had the world ending on December 20, 2012 (get it, 20122012 as some people might express the date), I might have been a believer, but then again, maybe all the big disasters are happening on December 20 and the world officially ends on December 21, 2012. The 2012 movie premieres on November 13, 2009. Watch the full trailer and a teaser trail on the official site.

In addition to the trailers, check out some of the movie publicity sites: This Is The End from some dude named Charlie Frost -- I'm pretty sure Sony Pictures dreamed him up -- but he's even on Twitter, The IHC or Institute for Human Continuity, whose mission is to prepare the world for 2012, and Farewell Atlantis, the title of the novel by Jackson Curtis, the character played by John Cusack in 2012.